Staten Island Easter Soured By "Galactically Stupid" Traffic

The Outerbridge Crossing

The government apparently has it out for drivers this holiday season. First the NYPD "ruined" Passover and now Staten Islanders are saying the Port Authority "soured" Easter when its poor planning led to a traffic jam that lasted for hours. For some reason the PA decided it would be a good idea to only have one cash lane open on the Outerbridge Crossing on Easter and that has Councilman James Oddo hopping mad. “Let’s fire them, reassign them somewhere far, far away from Staten Island,” he said. "This wasn’t an hour; it wasn’t a two hour pain. It wasn’t a rush hour. It was an all day event. This is filed under 'galactically stupid'.”

Oddo, along with City Council members Debi Rose and Vincent Ignizio, SI Beep James Molinaro, Representative Michael Grimm and Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, have requested a meeting with the Port Authority's executive director Christopher Ward to get to the bottom of the massive jam. "The sad thing is that [Sunday's] travesty was entirely avoidable if proper planning were undertaken," the officials wrote to Ward. "The simple fact is that the cash lanes on both the Outerbridge and the Goethals are a disaster and they have been for some time, which means that proper planning is crucial."

So far the Port Authority has put out a short apology for the delays, telling the Advance that "The Port Authority apologizes for the disruptions travelers faced. We value our customers and have immediately begun working to address the cause of [Sunday's] backup."

But what a backup it was! One woman told the Advance that a trip from Jersey that normally takes her 75 minutes took her seven hours on Sunday, getting her to the toll plaza at 2 a.m.. "We could have driven to New Hampshire in seven hours," she said. "I don't know why they had only one person taking tolls."

Did you get stuck in the traffic? Oddo is asking people to e-mail him their stories of the mess at [email protected] so that he can share their stories with PA officials.